This is a discussion on What bet to chase out a flush draw? within the online poker forums, in the Cash Games section; When I flop a good hand, and there's two of a suit on the board, and I want to fold out somebody with a flush

What bet to chase out a flush draw?

When I flop a good hand, and there's two of a suit on the board, and I want to fold out somebody with a flush draw; what's the right bet?

Obviously there is no right bet for all circumstances, because it depends on what kind of players are at the table, the stakes, what kind of table image I have at the moment, and how the stacks impact on implied odds. So there really is no right answer, just a basis for an interesting discussion.

I tell beginners that a pot-size bet is the standard, because it offers bad pot-odds to a single caller: 2 chances in 5 to win 2 for 1, at best, since it's only 2 in 5 if there is no bet on the turn.

The problem with that is, if there are a couple other callers, the flush draw is priced in. Not to mention the likelyhood that somebody who doesn't do the math will call anyway.

So, I may either overbet the pot, or try to see the next card cheap. What do you do?

#2

10th April 2009, 4:21 AM

pantin007 [6,214]

its not about folding out the flush draw when u have a big hand, it is about giving them the incorrect price to draw to the flush thus making u money in the long run

#3

10th April 2009, 4:26 AM

jewboy07 [868]

Poker at: Full Tilt

Game: holdem

Originally Posted by pantin007

its not about folding out the flush draw when u have a big hand, it is about giving them the incorrect price to draw to the flush thus making u money in the long run

ding ding ding we have a winner

we (poker players) make money when our opponents make mistakes i.e calling with incorrect odds

#4

10th April 2009, 4:38 AM

luckytokenz [154]

Online Poker at: full tilt

Game: holdem

Simply Put, if you have a flush draw with your hand made if the next card hits, the chances of you winning are about 35% which is 2: 1 odds (meaning your going to hit once out of every 3 time you play a flush draw), and if you don't hit on the turn, going to the river your chances drop to around 15-16%. giving you worse odds around 4 to 1 meaning again your going to hit 1 out of every 5 times. If that is the card odds, the you need to offer worse pot odds for calling, while at the same time extracting the most money from your opponent. See, you want your opponent to make mistakes, but you don't want them to draw out on your. Consider the following:

Supose you are playing limit hold em where bets are limited to a certain amount each round and you believe from previous betting your opponent is on a four flush draw with one card to come. if his flush hits, it will beat whatever hand you have, he will loose otherwise. The pot is $100 and the bet limit is $10 and you bet that amount. It's now your opponents turn. he has seen six cards so far, the two in his hand and the four common cards in the center. If he's drawing to a flush, four of these cards are spades. Of the remaining 46 cards in the deck that he hasn't seen, your opponent needs one of the nine remaining spades. The other 37 cards will loose for him. the odds against hitting his flush are 37-to-9 against or just a little over 4 to 1. The pot now is $110 and it cost 10 to call so he's being offered 11-1 pot odds. since the pot odds are bigger than his odds of making the winning hand, it's corrent for him to call. your bet was perfectly correct as well since your a 4 to 1 favorite to win the hand. But with the limit of 10 there is no way to prevent your opponent from drawing out on you. Now suppose the same hand is in no limit, but this time instead of 10 you bet 100. your opponent can still call the bet but now there is 200 in the pot and he has to call for 100. the pot is only offering his 2 to 1 odds but his chances are still 4 to 1. since the pot odds are smaller than the chances of making his hand, he's supposed to fold. but because you can bet whatever you want, you allowed your opponent to blunder if he wanted to contest the pot. you want to make as few as mistakes as possible while inducing as many mistakes from your opponents.

#5

10th April 2009, 10:57 AM

chefjimmy [112]

Poker at: carbon

Game: holdem

re: Poker & What bet to chase out a flush draw?

And in a nut shell were trying to help this opponent decide that chasing a hand isnt worth it.The only trouble is that some players your just not going to get off the draw,is this a good thing?yes ,but there are players who are not only going to call your raises but they are going to bet back at you...its just the play of different players...personally i prefer the made hand any day,but there are some that sre going to push the oesd and the fl draw n win...and when they do...then its hard to remind yourself that this is going to happen only one third of the time.All we can do is side with logic and take our lumps.

#6

10th April 2009, 11:32 AM

MrDuff1331 [76]

Online Poker at: Full Tilt

Game: omaha

i read the first few and they hit the nail on the head! What i was going to say is that yes if you keep giving the fishes the incorrect odds to call and they keep doing it you should be the winner in the long run! It does hurt when you lose bigger pots this way but you have to stick to the correct plays!

#7

10th April 2009, 6:09 PM

Dorkus Malorkus [12,432]

Poker at: Stars

Game: yes

Originally Posted by pantin007

its not about folding out the flush draw when u have a big hand, it is about giving them the incorrect price to draw to the flush thus making u money in the long run

/thread

#8

10th April 2009, 7:27 PM

switch0723 [8,452]

shove arr in

#9

10th April 2009, 7:28 PM

dj11 [22,113]

Poker at: WPN

Game: Horse.

What I have learned here; An essay by dj11.

Its ok to chase in limit, and might be in No Limit unless the bet before me is big.

The end.

#10

10th April 2009, 9:37 PM

GDRileyx [357]

Online Poker at: PokerStars

Game: Omahi HiLo

re: Poker & What bet to chase out a flush draw?

In cash games, you guys might be right, that the idea is to make the opponant buck the odds and make that your edge in the long run. But there are also times, particularly in tournament play, that you want that flush draw to fold.

#11

10th April 2009, 9:41 PM

Dorkus Malorkus [12,432]

Poker at: Stars

Game: yes

The only times I can think of are when effective stacks are so short your only realistic option is shoving anyway, so the question is moot.

#12

10th April 2009, 10:31 PM

cardplayer52 [1,195]

Online Poker at: full tilt

Game: holdem

whether this is early or late in a tourney is important to me. early on i'm more likely to give a free turn then bet if its a safe card. later on i will bet more often. in a 3 way pot your right its sometimes hard to price someone out if the first guy calls. and also the more in the pot the more likely someone is to chase. i play very tight early on in a tourney. i try to protect my stack more than i try to protect my hands. i find i last longer in more tourney's this way. i look at it this way i can double up early and still not have a better chance at winning the tourney or i can bust and have no chance. but later on if theres a good chance to cash if i win the pot i try to protect my hands. against one player i make it 1/2 to 2/3 the pot. if there are more than one i normally bet the pot but have been known to shove if i think i may get a caller. to me its trying to get them to make the biggest mistake possible. so i dont shove if i think the will fold a draw as the would make it easy for them to make the right play.

#13

10th April 2009, 10:48 PM

GDRileyx [357]

Poker at: PokerStars

Game: Omahi HiLo

Originally Posted by Dorkus Malorkus

The only times I can think of are when effective stacks are so short your only realistic option is shoving anyway, so the question is moot.

That's just because you don't think very hard. Just to give one example, on the verge of a ladder step, say ten players left, and everybody at the final table gets more than twice the payoff for tenth place. Not a place to shove. Blinds are up, antes are significant, maybe a limper or two, I raise with a pair, and the BB is the only caller, and he has me covered. Flop comes single suited and trips me up, and I don't have a card of that suit, but it's 50/50 the BB does. I definitely want to fold him out and win the significant pot.

#14

10th April 2009, 11:05 PM

dj11 [22,113]

Online Poker at: WPN

Game: Horse.

Originally Posted by GDRileyx

That's just because you don't think very hard. Just to give one example, on the verge of a ladder step, say ten players left, and everybody at the final table gets more than twice the payoff for tenth place. Not a place to shove. Blinds are up, antes are significant, maybe a limper or two, I raise with a pair, and the BB is the only caller, and he has me covered. Flop comes single suited and trips me up, and I don't have a card of that suit, but it's 50/50 the BB does. I definitely want to fold him out and win the significant pot.

In which case you are still close to a 25% favorite even if your villain flopped the flush!

remind me again why we want villain out of this pot? we shouldn't be playing big MTTs to finish 9th y'know. if effective stacks are particularly short we're just going to be looking to shove and if we're deep we're not going to have difficulty folding if the flush hits and we get action.

i guess you could have posted a possible SNG or satellite situation where it might be correct to want a draw out of the hand (i wasn't really thinking about donk n goes when i made my last post so bleh) but you didn't, although in SNG and sat bubbles we're invariably so short stacked that I would again claim the question is moot in any case.

#16

11th April 2009, 1:01 AM

zachvac [7,835]

Online Poker at: Pokerstars

Game: NL Hold 'em

If you're in a spot where you truly want him to fold, you probably should have folded preflop, because it basically means the increase in chips means almost nothing while losing chips means a lot more. If it's postflop and you truly want him to fold (I'm not gonna deal with examples, sure you can come up with one, although still pretty sure most examples like this would be a fold preflop) and you know you have the best hand just shove. If you really want him to fold why would you bet less? And if he's calling with any amount you bet and you have a better hand would you not like to at least get the most value out of your hand when he does call? Of course if you don't want to risk your tournament life maybe you should just check and fold. Actually come to think about it an example is kinda important here just because there are so many different spots that would have so many different answers.

So can you come up with a payout structure and hand example? That would probably be easier and we could look at what our goal is and then see how we want to accomplish it.

#17

11th April 2009, 1:45 AM

cloudyeyes [27]

You need to bet according to your pot odds if you want to bet. If you simply have a flush draw with no other draws or over-cards, your odds to hit a flush with the next two consecutive cards is roughly 36%. However, the flop and turn don't come at the same time, so a good bet would be 1/6 of the pot in to keep good pot odds, since you have about a 1 in 6 chance of hitting your flush on one draw. If the pot is too low to even make a difference with your bet, don't even bet, just check.

However, if you want to semi-bluff on the other hand, that's a whole nother world. Having a good position is key in that scenario.

#18

11th April 2009, 1:53 AM

twizzybop [2,344]

Game: holdem

Sometimes it just doesn't matter the size of the bet, they will call for that flush draw no matter the size of the bet. If indeed the flush does come per say on the turn with someone who called you, yes it is nice to be cautious but to not always think that person has indeed got the flush. Because now you can be outplayed every time you think a flush has hit and that person can either bet out at it or re-raise you after you bet out yourself.

#19

11th April 2009, 2:00 AM

deumsac [177]

Originally Posted by cloudyeyes

You need to bet according to your pot odds if you want to bet. If you simply have a flush draw with no other draws or over-cards, your odds to hit a flush with the next two consecutive cards is roughly 36%. However, the flop and turn don't come at the same time, so a good bet would be 1/6 of the pot in to keep good pot odds, since you have about a 1 in 6 chance of hitting your flush on one draw. If the pot is too low to even make a difference with your bet, don't even bet, just check.

However, if you want to semi-bluff on the other hand, that's a whole nother world. Having a good position is key in that scenario.

I guess I make a mistake when I wait and make sure 4 people including me have called the post-flop bet. I always think 35% ish odds, but I didn't think of both hands. Therefore, if there are 4 people in the pot, and all 3 call a bet after the flop, and it's down to you, do you call?

Overall odds of winning are 35%, but I guess someone might make a huge bet after the turn...

I guess I've been incorrectly calculating odds?

#20

11th April 2009, 2:10 AM

GDRileyx [357]

Online Poker at: PokerStars

Game: Omahi HiLo

re: Poker & What bet to chase out a flush draw?

In summary, it seems that the majority of people don't won't to fold out opponants who are on flush draws. They want the drawer to call the biggest bet the drawer will call; because this is giving the drawer the worst odds, and thus giving the most equity to the bettor in the long run.

#21

11th April 2009, 2:19 AM

luckytokenz [154]

Poker at: full tilt

Game: holdem

ok , enough with the jargon B.S. I'ts real simple ......How well you do in poker is determined by how many mistakes you make, and how many mistakes your opponent makes. The goal of all forms of poker is to avoid making mistakes while inducing as many mistakes as possible from your opponents. Every time you make a mistake you loose, and your opponents gain. Every time you INDUCE a mistake from your opponent, you gain and they loose. These gains and losses don't occur immediately. You may make a bad mistake, and still win a hand, and pull more chips into your stack. But in the very long run your results at the poker table will approach the sum of all your mistakes less the sum of your opponents mistakes. This principal governs all games which are mixtures of skill and chance.

i think you hit it on the nail gdriley in your last post!

I think that after you have got the odds being offered down pat, then the rest is up to your reading ability.

#22

11th April 2009, 5:22 PM

tdude [109]

Online Poker at: full tilt

Game: holdem

sometimes you should not even try to chase out a flush draw. let them bet and see the flop

#23

11th April 2009, 6:04 PM

teksmith [129]

Poker at: full tilt

Game: holdem

By the book you should bet enough to give them the wrong pot odds to call. that would usually be a pot sized or larger bet if it just the two of you. If it a multiway hand anything goes since one caller will price in pretty much everyone behind them.

#24

12th April 2009, 2:38 AM

cloudyeyes [27]

Originally Posted by deumsac

I guess I make a mistake when I wait and make sure 4 people including me have called the post-flop bet. I always think 35% ish odds, but I didn't think of both hands. Therefore, if there are 4 people in the pot, and all 3 call a bet after the flop, and it's down to you, do you call?

Overall odds of winning are 35%, but I guess someone might make a huge bet after the turn...

I guess I've been incorrectly calculating odds?

It depends what's in the pot. Say the pot represents your stack and it's your turn... You want to move all in at this point, since you can either steal the pot or have 1 or more people calling. If 1 person calls, you're getting close to roughly 3 to 1 on your money (2.667 to 1 to be precise). You'd want to see both cards at this point, since there's more callers on the table.

#25

12th April 2009, 2:55 AM

cloudyeyes [27]

re: Poker & What bet to chase out a flush draw?

Oh, and on a side note...a good, fairly easy way of calculating your odds is to count up your outs (your cards you think you can win with), then multiply by 2 for one draw, multiply by 4 for 2 draws, multiply by 6 for 3. This is how they've determined that you'll hit one of your cards on the flop (assuming you don't have pockets) about 33% of the time.

Calculating your odds in conjunction with the pot is a bit trickier, but still easy.

Say the pot size is 1000. You need to call 250. This means your pot odds are 1000/250 or 4:1.

So, if your odds to hit one of your outs is below 25%, you're getting bad pot odds. Why call a 20% chance to win if you're getting only 4:1 on your money for it? You should be getting 5:1 on your money for 20% odds.

It might all seem a bit complicated at first, but use this technique for a while and it becomes second nature.

#26

13th April 2009, 7:47 PM

Syfted [205]

Game: NLHE

Cloud, 4:1 is 20% odds because it's 1/5... 1:1 would be 50% odds, or 1/2... savvy? When I'm at the table I think like this...

I have a flush draw (assume nut). Villain bets pot. I'm getting 2:1, but need 4:1 to call because I really only have ~20% chance to hit my card on the turn. Can I induce two more bets of that size out of my opponent when the card hits? What about one bet twice the size? After the turn, I also have the river card to extract value. This can be helpful for bet sizing. If I'm on the turn for the river, the necessary bet size on the river may be so high that he won't call it, so I can't go flushing.